The Watchmen

It is, I believe, fashionable to worry about the surveillance state in the United States. As it becomes more and more evident that privacy is undergoing erosion on several fronts (not all of them state actors, to be sure) there are calls to beef up protections for the ability of Americans to do things without being observed, and potentially, called to account for them later.

I am of the opinion that this is, to a certain degree, part of people's search for significance. For the most part, people don't care about what random other people do or say. I'm not aware of very many blackmail attempts that have originated in some random contractor writing down what was said in a recorded snippet of conversation with Siri. Not that most people lack things that they legitimately understand to be worth hiding. But the chances of someone in Eastern Europe coming to see their ticket to wealth being the random chitchat of some Bellevue housewife seem to be somewhere between fat and slim.

Likewise, it's entirely possible that street-safety applications could lead to people "being unfairly tried and convicted in the court of public opinion." Although I would point out that given that the court of public opinion offers no protections against double-jeopardy or self incrimination, has abysmal standards of evidence and fails to guarantee any right to either confront accusers or see the evidence of guilt, describing any proceeding in that particular venue as "fair" stretches the (admittedly subjective) word to its breaking point. But the real problem with the court of public opinion isn't really that much different then the problem a person may have with the formal criminal-justice systems of the local, state and federal level: there are simply too many rules; just in general and that people disagree about.

In the piece from The Atlantic, the author notes: "In San Francisco, license-plate information collected by law enforcement and private operations was stored in a database that Immigration and Customs Enforcement gained access to; privacy and immigration advocates warned that ICE could easily use it to target undocumented immigrants. What if that car blocking the bike lane belongs to someone whose immigration status is uncertain, and their license plate information—and location—is used to speed their deportation?" On the one hand, I get it; The Atlantic is more or less left-leaning, and that means something of an unstated opposition to the idea that current immigration laws should be followed. On the other hand, "undocumented" immigrants are in the country illegally; "undocumented" is simply a euphemism for that status, given the general dislike that activists have for the term "illegal immigrant." And the determination that allowing license-plate information to be accessible to a specific law-enforcement agency is bad springs from this anarchist idea. And a certain amount of irony, given the fact that the article sees the impetus for street-safety applications this way:

In other words, government inaction, not the technology itself, has conscripted this militia into surveilling its fellow citizens through doorbells and smartphones. And government action can quell this need.

Why should "government" be more concerned with whether cars are blocking bicycle lanes than it is with the enforcement of any other of its myriad laws?

In the piece, co-developer of "How's My Driving/OurStreets," Mark Sussman notes: “If you ask any parking-enforcement agency, they’re going to say we don’t have enough resources to [issue the fines], and this is a way to maximize the resources that they do have. All of a sudden, if you have a lot more eyes on the streets that are tagging vehicles that are doing dangerous things, you have a lot more reach across the city.”

And it's this sentiment that often goes unstated in debates about the state of surveillance (and potential surveillance) in the United States today; there are, put simply, far more rules than there are resources to enforce them to most arbitrary levels of satisfaction, and that people want the rules that are important to them enforced. This means that as there are more and more rules, there is a greater and greater drive for technology to allow for efficient enforcement. But there is little will to work for rolling back rules. Sometimes, this is because of process problems. Doing away with immigration rules that advocates for poor immigrants find burdensome would generally take an act of Congress. Despairing of that, people push for a sort of anarchic response, seeking to hobble enforcement efforts. Court of Public Opinion offenses, on the other hand, are simply difficult to do anything with. Encouraging the nouveau riche to tolerate the noise of their less-affluent neighbors, or to see those of different backgrounds as other than potential threats is going to be a long slog. It's understandable why people might want to simply strip them of the tools needed to enforce their will on others.

The apparatus of enforcement, whether that be criminal, civil or informal, will continue to grow until it encompasses the level of effectiveness that some critical mass of people want. Demanding that those people remain unsatisfied doesn't strike me as a winning strategy.

A New Sensation

I understand the impulse to give up on explaining things to people who we understand don't perceive the world in the same way that we do. After all, I don't know how I would explain the difference between Yellow and Red to a blind person. It's the urge to then blame the other person for their inability to comprehend, rather than accept one is unable to overcome the barriers to communicating with them, that becomes a problem. To continue with the analogy of blindness, it's considered inappropriate to blame a blind person for the fact that they're unable to differentiate between different colors that they can't see; it's understood that their disability is not willful. And at the same time, it's not considered especially blameworthy to be unable to effectively explain the differences is hues to someone who has never seen them, and has no real way of directly interacting with them.

And in this, I think that there is value in extending the disability metaphor to discussions of ideas; specifically because it takes the conversation away from the idea that people are being willfully obtuse. Ideas are not necessarily any more accessible to someone with limited or no exposure to them than physical sensations are, because of the role that lived experience plays in how ideas are understood. Without a particular lived experience, certain ideas can be difficult, or even impossible, to fully or accurately comprehend. And the common aspects of our lived experiences are often much more narrow than we give them credit for.

Unfelt

Rollin'

Out for a morning ride with a few hundred of their closest friends... I know the shot is blurry; the camera is more focused on the background. But blurriness implies movement and uncertainty in location, and that works for me this time.

No Time For Losers

James Fallows, in a column in The Atlantic, makes the point that if President Trump were an airline pilot, senior surgeon, CEO of a public company, a United States Navy commander or leader of a university, museum or other public institution, "action would already be under way to remove him from that role." And then he points out that the Presidency of the United States is an exception to this rule, because of the Senate.

"Why the Senate?" Mr. Fallows asks, rhetorically, "Because the two constitutional means for removing a president, impeachment and the 25th Amendment, both ultimately require two thirds support from the Senate." He concludes with "The GOP Senate continues to show us what it is."

But he never tells us what he thinks the Republican-controlled Senate is. Not that it takes much to guess. There are any number of critics of the current Congress, and for people who understand President Trump to be clearly unfit for the office he holds, the fact that the Republicans in the Senate would absolutely acquit were the President to be impeached by the House of Representatives, proves them to be partisans first and interested in the welfare of the nation second.

There is another recent column in The Atlantic, however, that's worth taking into consideration. It was an interview with one Ben Howe, and it's titled, "Why Some Christians ‘Love the Meanest Parts’ of Trump." In it, Emma Green says that Mr. Howe "is angry that Christians claim they support the president because they want to end abortion or protect religious liberty, when supporting Trump suggests that what they really want is a champion who will mock and crush their perceived enemies." This may be the reason that Mr. Fallows believes that "And people who supported him had already shown that they would continue to swallow anything, from 'Grab 'em by…'  to 'I like people who weren’t captured'."

But if this is the case, then the problem isn't really Senate Republicans. Its the fact that the voters who put them in the Senate, and the President in the White House, are willing to overlook a lot in the service of having a President who will be the "champion who will mock and crush their perceived enemies." Accurately or not, the Senators in question understand that they are accountable to those voters, and they will not be rewarded for depriving the President's supporters of their champion. And while they may understand, "in their hearts of hearts" as the saying goes, that the President and his policy priorities are bad for the United States, they understand that the Executive and Legislative branches in the hands of Democrats are worse. As a group, they may not believe that the United States needs Donald Trump to be in office, but it's likely that they do believe that the United States needs them to be in office. And voting to convict President Trump, and remove him from office, is likely to end with some number of them being removed from their offices in the next election cycle.

The idea that the American public lacks any real power in the realm of politics and/or the good sense to use it properly has become something of a cliché by this point. And expecting that to change would be a clear triumph of hope over experience. But so it the expectation that the role of elected officeholders is to deliver messages that their constituents are opposed to hearing, even at the cost of their seats. If one suspects that politicians are venal, corrupted or cowardly, they have no reason to do anything that threatens their own authority. But likewise, if one views them as genuinely public-minded people who ran for office because they honestly believed that they could be of assistance to the Republic, they still have no reason to do anything that threatens their ability to be of service to their nation, unless and until they effectively give up.

If anger at their fellow Americans is what drives people "to swallow anything," then the best way to erode their support for someone who appears to otherwise be unsuited to the office that he holds is to combat the anger. Otherwise, it will simply give rise to champion after champion. And expecting that elected politicians will hold these champions accountable will remain unrealistic.

In Case of Emergency

The other day, I received a message, purporting to be from my sister "via Nextdoor." The subject line read: "I'm still waiting for you to agree to be my emergency contact." Embedded in the e-mail is a hidden tag, so that the e-mail displays: "I invited you to be my emergency contact. Nextdoor is a private social network that helps neighbors connect with each other." But this text is not in the actual e-mail. The actual body of the e-mail is simply a request to accept an invitation to join Nextdoor.

Of course, the message wasn't actually from my sister. She had submitted my e-mail address to the site as a possible emergency contact, but she hadn't been aware that this would require me to also be a member of the site. So we talked about it, and decided to drop it. Nextdoor, however, wasn't going to let go so easily, and they've been sending reminders with my sister's name on them.

I don't mind the outreach, in and of itself. Social media networks need new users in order to grow, and sometimes that means actively recruiting them. When they'd first set up a "neighborhood" for the area in which I live, they'd sent postcards in the mail. I'd ignored it, and, aside from a few assorted media pieces on how the site's "crime and safety" sections were "hyperactive" in affluent White neighborhoods in various cities, including Seattle, raising concerns that fearful residents were engaging in open racial profiling. And since out of sight became out of mind, I'd completely forgotten them by the time the initial invitation showed up. So I suspect that Nextdoor's marketing department immediately saw the potential in the "emergency contact" functionality to grow the user base.

But as someone who isn't a Nextdoor user, their co-opting of my sister in this feels disingenuous. It's fairly clear that Nextdoor doesn't need me to sign up in order to pass me messages. If something were going on at my sister's place, and her neighbors wanted to alert her emergency contacts, Nextdoor could easily send me a high-importance e-mail. They've been sending me reminder after reminder, after all.

Up In Smoke

As a neither a smoker nor a public-health crusader, I'll admit to not getting it. But reading this article in the BBC about why the United States doesn't use the sort of visually graphic warning labels that are common in Europe, I was left with a question. Given that smoking tobacco is considered the leading cause of preventable death in the United States, with massive economic costs and supposedly no upside at all, why is the argument over whether smokers should have to endure graphic imagery in order to purchase it? I would have presumed that the real push would be for an outright ban.

Part of it, I guess, is that cigarettes and other smoking tobacco is ingrained in society that a ban would be politically unpalatable. Guns and opioid drugs, which result in far fewer deaths on an annual basis produce much more public fear, which advocates can leverage into calls for drastic action.

Which, in the end, makes sense. While there are people who are concerned with the impacts to the health of the public, the general public itself doesn't really fit into that category. What the public tends to be concerned with is its perception of being healthy or unhealthy (or threats to that health). Having a loved one gunned down in a random shooting or keel over from an opioid overdose changes people's perceptions of the risks to themselves and other people that they care about. This allows proposals to ban some or all guns or to clamp down on the distribution of opioid painkillers to be seriously entertained, even if they may or may not have any real chance of going anywhere.

But cigarettes aren't generally frightening. And even disgusting pictures of what happened (which may, or may not be accurate) to previous smokers don't change that. Even if they creep out someone thinking of buying a pack of cigarettes, the public at large isn't terribly concerned with it, all things considered. And so while governments can (and do) seem to go out of their way to make smoking expensive and inconvenient (sometimes comically so), a simple ban seems to be a bridge too far.

The View Police

“An important part of their world view is victimization and being aggrieved.” I've become struck by not only how often I hear this, but the sheer number of groups about which this criticism has been made. It seems that people spend more time calling some or another group out for claiming victimization and grievance than people actually directly claim victimization and grievance.

“The victimization narrative” is the new... I'm not sure, exactly. There is a pithy single word one could drop in there, I'm sure, but it escapes me at the moment. In any event, I'm struck by how often people point at one another and note that this or that group sees themselves as victims, rather than empathizing with the “real” victims. And, of course, opinion on who “the real victims” actually are changes with the viewpoint of the critic. Calling out people for claiming victimization does not seem to be an activity of its own; rather, it appears to generally be out of sympathy for another group, one that the critic believes to be more deserving.

On the one hand, I get it. The label of “victim” comes with a certain amount of power, and so it's only natural that a) people would want to claim that for themselves and b) people would be on the lookout for unjustified claims. But sometimes, it seems that the aggressive policing of claims of victimhood comes at the direct expense of the very empathy the claimants are faulted for not displaying. Part of this is, I think, because of a general idea that there are no genuinely neutral parties when victimization is alleged. The difference between an active aggressor and a passive bystander is one of degree, not of kind. Both are guilty of creating victimization. So a group of people that inaccurately (to the degree that one's view of self can be inaccurate, anyway) views themselves as victimized contributes, however unintentionally, to the victimization of the genuinely oppressed. But, unintentional or otherwise, victimizing others tends to result in being considered unworthy of any sort of empathy or sympathy. Another aspect to this may be the fact that empathy often comes across as a non-renewable resource; and if there's only so much to go around, it can be understandable that people can be stingy with it at times.

“The victimization narrative,” whether a given critic feels that a specific group is entitled to it or not, is a symptom of a problem that the group is facing; a problem that they can't find a way to fix, and one that they're unwilling, unable or unready to accept responsibility for. And that problem is real for them, regardless of what someone else might say about it. People become wrapped up in their own problems, to the exclusion of having empathy for others, because their problems are subjectively severe enough that they don't see themselves as having luxury of empathy for others. This is part of the reason why groups who find themselves in dire straits rarely response with a newfound understanding of the experiences of others; they simply don't have the emotional bandwidth. If being seen as a victim results in a grant of power by the greater society, the typical purpose to which such power would be put is to solve whatever problems the community faces. Criticism of a group, either because the problem is “only in their heads” or a result of their own shortcomings, does nothing to either fix the problem or create the tools that would allow for a fix. And in many cases, the statement “An important part of their world view is victimization and being aggrieved,” simply reinforces “their” sense of victimization and grievance, as it's seen as a call to deny the claim to the power to remediate the perceived problem.

A society whose constituent groups are at odds with one other over scarce resources will always have conflicts. Some of the slings and arrows used to prosecute those conflicts will be verbal, but they're still real to their targets. The impulse to judge claims, rather than expand the pool of resources, will not result in resolution.

The Art of the Sword

One of the recurring activities at the local Renaissance Faire are brief lessons on how to use the European Longsword. It's remarkably fun. It's also entertaining to watch other people learning.

They Call Us Messrs. Pig

On Sunday, in the wake of two mass shootings, musician Jason Isbell questioned the necessity of ordinary Americans to own an “assault weapon,” touching on the pedantic and intricate ways gun-rights advocates define their wares.

“Legit question for rural Americans,” responded William McNabb, a Twitter user whose bio says he lives in southern Arkansas. “How do I kill the 30-50 feral hogs that run into my yard within 3-5 mins while my small kids play?”

McNabb’s response, and his back-and-forth with Isbell, paralyzed social media with countless memes that poked fun at the idea of semiautomatic rifles as a vital tool in wild pig home defense. An 8-bit game was quickly developed. Even “Simpsons” writer Bill Oakley created a mock episode script title “Bart Gets 30-50 Feral Hogs.”
Think 30-50 feral hogs is a joke? Millions more are rampaging across the U.S.

As the idea of sounders of feral pigs necessitating an armed response was quickly lumped into the category of "pedantic and intricate," the joke has kept going. This past weekend, while listening to the radio, I heard some NPR personalities mocking the idea. And, okay, I can see how one might think of it as a completely spurious grasp at any straw to retain "the necessity of ordinary Americans to own an 'assault weapon'."

But there is a difference between "not a problem for me" and "not a problem." While feral hogs are now found in Washington State, there's a mountain range (not to mention a fairly sizable chunk of suburbia) between them and me. The chances of me walking out to the car and having to figure out how to deal with hostile semi-wildlife in the immediate future are slim. But for those people who do actually live in hog habitat, it can be tricky. And so I can see the utility of a high-capacity, semi-automatic rifle. That, however, leans towards the idea that there is a legitimate reason for at least some people to own an AR-15, AK-47 or one of their countless clones, variants and knock-offs; and this stands in the way of the complete ban that many gun-control advocates feel is the best solution to the random, portable, violence that semi-automatic rifles represent.

It's worth pointing out that gun-control advocates have their own set of "pedantic and intricate ways" to define their position, and one of these is asking the question of "why does anyone need to own a weapon like this?" after having decided that a) the status quo should have the burden of proof and b) there is no legitimate affirmative answer to the question. The problem with a legitimate need is that it requires a solution. And given that most of the gun-control advocates that I've met are rather steadfast in their ignorance about firearms in general and the feared "assault weapons" in particular, the don't understand the uses and functionality of weapons well enough to offer any solutions. And this can prompt them to simply deny that any proof offered is valid.

What this often says to people like Mr. McNabb is that people like Mr. Isbell don't actually care about his problems and motivations. This fuels the disconnect between Red and Blue America, with the two sides increasingly at odds because each time one group attempts to solve a crisis for itself, it tends to create a crisis for the other. And as each side comes to view these crises as intentional designs, rather than undesirable side effects, the belief that malice is at work grows more and more.

While President Trump is famously quick to find ways to turn resentments to his political advantage, he's not alone in this.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said it was "way too convenient" that Epstein could no longer incriminate others.

"What a lot of us want to know is, what did he know?" he told reporters. "How many other millionaires and billionaires were part of the illegal activities that he was engaged in?"
Jeffrey Epstein: How conspiracy theories spread after financier's death

This certainly sounds to me like a politician looking to capitalize on the resentments of "the 99%." Mayor de Blasio may be attempting to vilify a smaller group of people than President Trump typically goes after, but the goal is the same; to build support by legitimizing anger at others by implicating them in acting against the interests of the angry.

These sorts of appeals to emotion are effective. Which is why they're so common. But I suspect that they're more difficult to control than people think they are. Which is something that I expect we'll figure out, one way or the other.

Rebalance of Power

I was reading an article in The Atlantic that tied the jailhouse suicides of Jeffrey Epstein and Sandra Bland into a broader pattern of such deaths. It noted:

Preserving life is our moral and legal responsibility. Sandra Bland could have been our daughter, our sister, our loved one, our friend. Jeffrey Epstein was certainly not a sympathetic character, but his death, while perhaps leaving some victims relieved, deprives others of a sense of justice.

That deprivation of a sense of justice was illustrated in another piece in the magazine that asked: "How did [Epstein] manage to evade accountability, this final time?" For my part, I'm uncertain that dying in jail by one's own hand counts as an evasion of accountability, even though that may not be the consequence that people may have wished.

But what I took away from those statements was the idea that for many people, vengeance is a primary component in the pursuit of justice. Being dead is the worst thing that can happen to a person, until it becomes the "easy way out" of dealing with something that others think they should endure, whether that be the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, or the legal consequences of crimes (pre or post conviction). And the idea that death, when it comes between a person and justified vengeance, represents an escape from accountability raises the question of whether society regards justice/accountability and vengeance as two different things. And if it doesn't, is much of the pursuit of justice driven by a desire to reaffirm the value of the wronged party by giving them a certain amount of power of those who have been judged to have wrongfully wielded power themselves. Perhaps more simply, is accountability about restoring a sense of value to a wronged party through a grant of power, either direct or vicarious?

While that seems to be asking for trouble, I'm unsure what other forms of accountability might suffice, if that definition is incorrect. Even restorative justice ideals, after all, usually require that the offender do something for the wronged party, with an express aim of reducing the latter's feelings of powerlessness. Power, however, is often personal, and this, perhaps, is how notions of personal worth become bound up in it. And I suspect that it's this that often leads to abuses in the name of justice. Not that what Mr. Epstein was facing would count as abuse at this point. Still, there are people other than him to still be dealt with, and I'm curious as to what will happen to the next notorious case that comes along.

You Might Want To Rethink That...

File under: Maybe this wasn't as good an idea as you thought...

A man who sparked panic by walking into a Walmart with a rifle and body armor told police he was testing his right to bear arms in public.

Dmitriy Andreychenko entered the shop heavily armed, days after a mass shooting at another of Walmart's stores.

"I wanted to know if that Walmart honored the second amendment," the 20-year-old told police after his arrest.

Prosecutors have charged him with making a terrorist threat.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for Mr. Andreychenko, who appears to be being charged with feloniously thoughtless scariness ("The terrorist threat charge covers an act which 'recklessly disregards the risk of causing the evacuation' of a building, or 'knowingly causes a false belief or fear... that a condition exists involving danger to life'.") for his admittedly ill-advised "social experiment." The response to this illustrates the degree to which our legal system, cynicism aside, is designed to respond to public fears and anxieties. Terrorism doesn't usually involve recklessness or scaring people when there is no actual threat.

It also speaks to the strange relationship that we have with firearms. In a manner of speaking, Mr. Andreychenko did nothing illegal. There's no indication that the weapons he was carrying were illegal or that he wasn't allowed to possess them. (Although now, according to the article, he'll have to surrender his guns even if granted bail.) But his (possibly soon to be ex-) wife was correct: people were going to take him walking into Walmart "heavily armed" very seriously. But to be sure, what people really objected to was him being so visibly armed; after all, he was held at gunpoint by another armed customer in the store until the police arrived, and there's nothing in the story that indicates that this man was also detained.

But is also illustrates the disconnect between two different constituencies that simply can't understand where the other is coming from.

"This is Missouri, I understand if we were somewhere else like New York or California, people would freak out," [Mr. Andreychenko] said, according to police filings.

While in this case, Mr. Andreychenko wasn't as in tune with his community as he believed that he was, the general understanding that people in the central areas of the country have a different relationship with guns is true enough. Had it occurred to him to try this experiment in, say, January (assuming that no more mass shootings were widely publicized in the meantime) he may have provoked nothing more than exasperation with his need to test Walmart on their perceived constitutional commitments. But as it is, he's looking at prison time.

Dark Places

When I first encountered this picture, it was accompanied by the following, exactly as I found it:

Suicide was never the answer to your problems, my friend. It never was. You see, Life has hardships and we have to live with them whether we want it or not. Everybody experiences pain, yet some people are just there, being a coward, trying to kill themselves. Yes i said it, coward. Well what do you call someone who runs away from everything?

It may take your pain away from this "cruel" very world, but think of your loved ones, even yourself. And think what would happen if you killed yourself.

You see, everybody gets sad, depressed or whatever. You just gotta have to think of the good things that happened in you and think how life would eventually get better if you will stay strong and positive. If you're killing yourself, you'll miss out a lot of good stuffs.

I never speak ill of the dead, especially when it comes to labeling suicides as cowards, in the service of salving my own feelings of hurt or to make myself feel strong. The dead cannot come back and defend themselves.

A smirking hipster with a sign is no substitute for really attempting to help another human being through the dark times in their lives. When people kill themselves, it's not because they suddenly stop believing in lights at the end of tunnels - it's because they understand themselves to be trapped in a cave in. And that feeling may be fleeting. I recall being told that the gap between suicidal ideation and taking action may be as little as five seconds.

When I was in college, I understood for the first time just how much many people fear dying. Anything that can overcome that fear must be powerful indeed. So simply expecting people to buck up - telling them that everyone has to deal with pain, and that being unable to deal with whatever is hurting them is a sign of moral failure - that's not helping. That's saying: "Not only has life dealt you a hand that you can't understand how to deal with, but you're culpably weak and therefore detestable." And I don't know that it helps to say that to someone. They labor under enough sorrow without my self-righteous condescension on their backs.

But with all of that having been said, I think I understand the impulse to label suicides as cowardly and selfish. It's a common enough perspective that it's clear that it serves a purpose. Just not, I think, the purpose that one might wish.

Secrets

So I found the following thread on Reddit: "China has Tienanmen Square. What historical event does your government not want you to talk about?" Cue any number of people going on about this or that thing that some nation had done. But one commenter noted that most of the examples given were: "bad shit that countries did but openly admit." And I mostly agree with that. None of the examples I read that were raised for the United States dealt with items that I'd never heard of, or seemed to have been scrubbed from search engines. And this is common with discussions like this. People take incidents that they are personally very invested in and treat a failure to aggressively broadcast them as evidence of a coverup and/or official censorship. I have yet to find an situation where someone says: "The mainstream media won't talk about this, but..." that couldn't be found in the mainstream media. It was never front page news, but it was there nonetheless.

But in thinking about what an American version of Tienanmen Square might be, I started to wonder what sort of event would the United States government effectively attempt to render classified, such that speaking of it could be construed as revealing state secrets. For the most part, I couldn't really think of anything. But I don't have a security clearance, so if there are such events, I wouldn't know about them. And that's what makes the question not really work in this context. There are probably any number of covert operations that, if someone knew anything about them, they'd be sanctioned for speaking up about. Take the NSA's looking into metadata from cellular calls, for instance. But that wasn't a public event that took place within a major metropolitan area. It was behind closed doors from the start.

When it comes to historical events, it's not the government that wants the role of censor; it's some or another segment of the populace, instead. In other words, at least in the United States, it's not the government that has staked some important aspect of its identity on a particular understanding of historical particulars. Segments of the citizenry, however, may be a different story. So what tends to keep events out of the major "official" channels isn't the threat of prosecution, but a combination of limited space and limited attention. But to people who understand that a given event should have received more air time than it did, that's not a particularly satisfying conclusion. And so we end up with an idea that the government is strangely incompetent, gamely attempting to hide events that even cursory research quickly surface.

Unnoticed

I am, at least most of the time, comfortable with my own insignificance. I understand that in the grand scheme of things, the difference between my being here, and my not being here, is vanishingly small. The Universe will not miss me once I am gone. There are a few people that might, and that may have a heavy impact on them as individuals, but existence will proceed, pretty much the same as it would were I never to have been here.

This is not a particularly popular position, and I have encountered a number of people who have been inclined to dispute it with me. The reason for this, I believe, is that many people associate it with a tendency to self-harm. The insignificant have no reason to continue their own existence, as I understand the general gist of it. But it suits me, and I'm still here. And, perhaps more importantly, it frees me from having to prove to a world that seems uncaring that it should care. I can be content in the number of people who do express caring, and not need anything from the rest of the world.

Dame White, Slayer of Witches

Of all of the Disney Princess costumes that were in evidence at the local Renaissance Fair this year, this was the best for my money. I know that for the "purists" this sort of thing is a travesty, but the sense of fun and whimsy that goes into many of these makes them worthwhile in my opinion.

And the shield is amazing.